African Mysteries

Chobe boasts one of the largest wildlife concentrations in Africa and our game drives bear that out. Giraffe families, hippos’, carmine bee eaters, fish eagles, crocodiles, ibis and herons greet us at every turn.

We will stay at Jackalberry Lodge in the middle of Botswana’s water world. Prior to arrival in Chobe we had become accustomed to a very dry landscape. In Zimbabwe – at the tail end of the dry season – we saw the arid land… the pools and watercourses in Botswana were a welcome change. Botswana also seemed more prosperous than Zimbabwe and Zambia. We learned that Botswana was indeed doing well in economic terms as its per-capita income was growing at a robust 9% rate – a rate that was competitive world wide. Mining, tourism and cattle production led Botswana’s economic boom.

In the afternoon at Jackalberry we were visited by local crafts people who taught us the basics of basket weaving and we all took a shot at the craft…with varying degrees of success. Our instructors work was finely detailed and the baskets came in all sizes and styles. Two of their products now sit on our table at home. We note that we have reached the 14 day mark on the African odyssey.

A day of game drives was in the offing and it proved to be a memorable one. We drove up on a scene we had only seen on film. Ten lions were on the hunt. We heard the distinctive warning bark of an impala announcing danger and marked the lions on a stealthy approach to a herd of cape buffalo. The lionesses worked in a crouch through the high grass in a vee formation that cut off retreat on the buffalo herd’s flanks. They slowly closed the arms of the vee to establish a point of attack. All of the predator’s movements were painstakingly slow; their approach took a little more than an hour. We had no sense of time passing as we watched and cameras clicked.

The herd responded with multiple position changes to create a defense. A wall of large bodies and deadly horns was a difficult obstacle to the hungry lions but, in time, the lions were able to establish an attack point. A bull buffalo would challenge the lions at their attack point and the lions would repeatedly retreat, regroup and try new launching areas.

Things eventually came to a crisis and the lions charged forward. Two lions actually got on the back of a buffalo, then one slipped under it, then both were driven off by a wall of aggressive defenders. It was a near kill. Group defense drove the lions away until a herd of elephant interposed themselves between predator and prey. We watched this for several hours and realized that we had witnessed “the law of the jungle” in real time and with proximity. We were reminded that something had to die for something else to live.

Chobe was a definite eye opener.

Our final night at Chobe had arrived and we were regaled by dances and songs performed by the locals. The dances were explosive and complex giving us another taste of tribal culture; and a smooth transition to the travel that would come in the early morning.